HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Approaching Normal – Blue October

Following an album like Foiled (2006) is no easy feat. BLUE OCTOBER rose to new levels of popularity with their fourth album and the lyrics revealed so much of Justin Furstenfeld (vocal) that after listening to it you find yourself wondering if there was anything left to give. 

Enter Approaching Normal. Released on March 24 2009, the album split critics, gaining some serious mixed reviews. And it makes sense. It’s an album of lows and highs, both emotionally and in terms of quality. Despite this, it still debuted at number 13 on the Billboard charts, and provided some of BLUE OCTOBER’s most heavy-hitting tracks.

One of these tracks is Weight Of The World. The track was originally released on the band’s first live album, Argue With A Tree (2004), as an almost spoken word piece. While the intimacy of the lyrics fits this form perfectly, the Approaching Normal release hits a little harder. Opening the album with this deeply personal track that details Furstenfeld‘s battle with depression, drinking, and drugs on his days off on tour was a quick way to let listeners know that like Foiled, you were about to see him reveal all his darkest moments.

There are other times on the album where the band reveals extremely private, personal topics to them. Take the album’s first single Dirt Room, a track filled with venom and anger. At the time of release, the band were quite reserved with explaining the meaning behind the fury-filled track, simply alluding to it being about an incident that Furstenfeld ‘took care’ of. But, since then they have revealed the song is about their former manager Michael Rand who served the band with a lawsuit, attempting to take a cut of their earnings from the highly successful Foiled. Though the song, and accompanying music video, show that it was a time that had the band in turmoil, the result is one of BLUE OCTOBER’s best headbanging tracks.

Dirt Room isn’t the only track that ended up becoming encompassed in legal drama from Approaching Normal. Closing track, The End, is one of the band’s bleskest songs with an extremely dark story; describing a man who watches his wife with another man, before murdering both of them and then himself. It’s delivered with such emotion that it’s not a track anyone could take lightly, and ended up following Furstenfeld to court throughout his divorce proceedings, with a lawyer claiming the song was written about his ex-wife. Furstenfeld argued it was written about something that happened in his neighbourhood before he and his ex-wife had ever met. The track remains a storytelling highlight for the band, employing a mix of eerily quiet, screamed vocals, and classical strings it’s an album finisher that experiments in ways the band hadn’t experimented before. And, with the added drama around it, this is a track that became one of the most memorable on Approaching Normal whether for better or for worse.

The album isn’t all rage and regret, though. A notable difference between BLUE OCTOBER’s previous work and Approaching Normal is the increase in upbeat tracks. The album features what Furstenfeld dubbed, at the time, ‘one of the only truly happy songs’ he has written: Blue Skies. 

It’s a track that showed a new, just as intimate, side of Furstenfeld, one that is vulnerable in his happy state. Unlike previous happier tracks, like Independently Happy, Blue Skies is a track that embraces happiness while it lasts. However, unlike other tracks on the album, it hasn’t made its mark. This could be in part because it feels slightly rushed, against the polished ballads of the album. The vocals don’t stand out and the pacing is off. Furstenfeld himself in a later Reddit AMA mentioned it as one of his least favourite tracks, commenting that “blue skies is recorded so bad”. And, for such a unique track in their back catalogue, they don’t revisit it often. According to setlist.fm, it’s a track that has been played live only a handful of times. 

Compare this to another upbeat track, Jump Rope, which combines a happier sound and more typical BLUE OCTOBER lyrics, and it’s clear Blue Skies was a choice the band decided not to dwell on. Jump Rope details the ups and downs of Furstenfeld‘s mood, and gives advice, potentially to his daughter on how to cope with what life throws at you. Considering the track has been played around ten times more than Blue Skies, whether because of its unique sound or the fact the track fits their usual themes more, Jump Rope seems to have stood the test of time better.

Ultimately, Approaching Normal has some singles that BLUE OCTOBER wouldn’t be the same without, and serves as a great document for some of the band’s most challenging moments. But, alongside this are tracks that easily slip through the cracks. Slower moments on the record, such as Picking Up Pieces, can get lost among the sea of ballads, something Entertainment Weekly summed up as ”an often gloomy yet commercial-sounding collection”. This isn’t to say they are weak tracks, just that against stiff competition on the album, and its famous predecessor it is the more experimental, hard hitters that have endured.

Approaching Normal was originally released on March 24, 2009 via Universal Records

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